Frequently unasked questions: Do cars come any better?

What it would be like if car companies owned newspapers.

Frequently unasked questions: Do cars come any better?

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is selling off its newspapers, which include La Stampa, the venerable daily broadsheet based in Turin.

This is so the company can "focus more on car making" apparently, and some cynics might say it's about time they focussed more on car making. But we certainly won't.

It's hard to imagine what it would be like to write for a newspaper owned by a car company. But let me do just that. Here's Luigi Pinetti's final road test for La Stampa.

"When the definitive history of the world is told, it will be recorded that it was an Italian company based right here in Turin that was responsible for the extraordinary machine that is the 2016 Fiat 500.

"With superbly rendered new bumper profiles and additional chrome strips, this ground-up restyle looks completely different to any 500 you've seen, except for the last one, which was modelled on the original.

"But it's not just the inarguable retrospective futuristic panache that makes this car stand out from the mere conveyances around it like a beacon of phosphorescence in an endless abyss. It is the technology.

"In its latest guise, this car has a screen in the dashboard. Yes, just like a television only smaller, and not strictly able to display television programs, but in so many other ways almost exactly like a television screen.

"Such a stunning leap required a change to the dashboard, but the designers didn't stop there. They also made available an almost ethereally elegant tartan pattern on the seats. It's easy to see why the savvy dismiss cars from backwaters like Japan and Germany the moment they capture a mere glimpse of this irrefutable apex of everything.

"For only a few hundred Euros more, the 500 can be specified with a superb piece of Italian ingenuity where, if you push a button (well, two buttons), the car will stay on the same speed without you having to touch the accelerator pedal. This works excellently in all circumstances except up and down hills, or with the TwinAir engine.

"Still, with 51 kW of raw, exciting, race-bred Italian power from two raw, exciting, race-bred Italian cylinders, each of them displacing a formidable 437.5 cc, the TwinAir engine is surely the biggest motorological leap since that seen in Benz's Patent Motorwagen Model 2.

"The new 500 is a huge credit to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. It also reflects especially well on the Director of Communications, Dr Guido Donofrio who, if he is reading, should see my CV somewhere on his desk by now.

"Don't misunderstand, these ten years of tough, independent motoring journalism have been great, but the newspaper's now on eBay and, well, I'm available to make the challenging switch to corporate comms. Very available, Dr D, very available."